Case study · Typography
How I picked a typeface
This site used to run on Inter. It’s a genuinely great typeface — which is exactly the problem. It’s the default of the modern web, so it quietly reads as “nothing in particular.” I wanted something with a little more personality that still got out of the way.
Rather than guess from specimen pages, I built a small lab to audition fonts on my actual content — the hero, the project cards, the tiny uppercase labels. Same words, different voice. Here’s how I thought about it, and what I landed on.
What I was looking for
- Judge it in context, not in isolation. A font can look stunning in a specimen and fall apart in a real paragraph — so the test had to use my own copy.
- Three jobs, one system. It needs a headline with character, body text you forget you’re reading, and small labels that stay sharp at 11px.
- Personality without volume. Distinct enough to feel like a deliberate choice — not so loud it wears a costume.
- Boring on purpose where it counts. For anything longer than a line, readability beats novelty every time.
Try it yourself
Tap any pairing below and the preview re-renders in it — hero, cards, and a type specimen. This is the exact tool I used to decide.
Product Manager · Builder
Product Manager · Tinkerer · Probably Drinking Coffee
Building things I find interesting — usually somewhere between curiosity, good design, and a strong cup of coffee.
BrewAtlas
A map-first guide to specialty coffee, built for travelers who plan trips around a good espresso.
KanjiKatch
A spaced-repetition game that makes learning Japanese kanji feel like collecting.
GridGuy
A tiny tool for designers to sanity-check layout grids before handoff.
Field Notes
Long-form writing on product, curiosity, and the occasional cup of coffee.
Specimen
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
ABCDEFGHIJKLM · abcdefghijklm · 0123456789 · &?!
Body copy at a comfortable reading size. The right typeface should feel almost invisible while you read a paragraph like this one, then show its personality the moment a headline lands above it. abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789
jack-mcgovern.com · mono label sample
The verdict
Space Grotesk
It’s geometric and clean like Inter, but carries small quirks — open terminals, a faintly mechanical curve to the letters — that give it an understated builder feel. I paired it with Space Mono for the little uppercase labels, which ties the whole system together.
Distinct enough to feel like a choice, quiet enough to never get in the way. You’re reading the rest of the site in it right now.